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This article was changed from its original posting to correct the evening the council meeting took place.

City council members have decided who among them will sit on the newly-created Fire Master Plan Implementation Committee.

Couns. Mark MacDonald and Claude McIntosh will be sitting on the committee, along with a group of unspecified lay members. The goal of the committee is to oversee the implementation of the 37 recommendations contained in the city’s Fire Master Plan. Council was set to approve the council-member appointments Tuesday evening.

MacDonald has been the most vocal proponent of the creation of such a committee, arguing it is a necessary step if the city wants to implement all of the parts of the Fire Master Plan, which was completed in 2015.

But MacDonald’s top priority appears to be to use the committee to keep the fire department’s budget from growing.

“What (the creation of the committee) finally does is it gives an opportunity for the council to address the rate of growth in the fire budget,” said MacDonald after the committee’s creation last month. “The essence of the Fire Master Plan is that it gives us a toolbox that we can use to address that issue.”

Council asked fire Chief Pierre Voisine to design the terms of reference for the new committee, which lays out its mission and how it will operate. When the chief returned with a design for a “Community Fire Prevention Program Advisory Committee,” MacDonald was livid, saying that Voisine had not delivered what was requested.

“This doesn’t even come close (to what we wanted),” said MacDonald at the time. “We asked for terms of reference for a Fire Master Plan Implementation Committee, and we got something completely different.”

While being questioned by council, Voisine admitted he wasn’t convinced that a Fire Master Plan Implementation committee was necessary, because much of the master plan has already been implemented.

The Standard-Freeholder found that Voisine had even submitted meticulously kept reports to council advising them of what work had been done, was underway or was planned to implement all of the Fire Master Plan’s recommendations. As of January 2017, all of the legally-required changes had already been implemented or were in the process of being so.

Nonetheless, council instructed the fire chief to come back with the Terms of Reference it wanted, which he did in late April. This design was unanimously accepted, although council opted to have lay members from the community sit on the committee, instead of just city councillors – a decision MacDonald says he does not agree with.

Based on past practice, the city will soon post notices seeking members for the newly created committee, with applications submitted through city hall. Council would review the applicants before deciding who it wishes to appoint.